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[NMLUG] Why so many Linux distros?
On Monday 09 October 2006 11:43, Steve Browne wrote:
> On Mon, 9 Oct 2006 11:14:31 -0600, you wrote:
> >Out of curiosity, what missing applications do you feel are a stumbling
> > block for the set of users you're talking about?
> >
> >[1] Whatever "high-end" is mean here. Expensive? Niche-interest?
>
> In my specific case I mean very expensive, niche-interest 3D computer
> animation software, with which Blender can't yet compete..
Okay, that's a good example. Another area that still needs work is EDA.
(Although you'd be surprised how much can be done with open-source software
once you figure out that the "standard" flow of things promoted in commercial
EDA software isn't always necessary, needful, or even efficient.)
> The common problem I run into is that "closed-code" high-end software
> doesn't (obviously) provide it's source-code, so that if you try to
> install it you find it is compiled for (say) Redhat 4.0 and not
> Mandriva 2007, and that it needs glibc-3.3-5 and not the glibc-3.4-2
> your distro has (and ad infinitum). When commercial software
> publishers say "Linux" they usually mean Redhat and nothing else.
Most of the time, this is a simple problem to get around: just install a
minimal base system of Whitebox in a chroot. Actually, I run quite a few
closed-source, binary only tools under Debian which supposedly "only work"
under Redhat without even needing a chroot.
The root technical problem, of course, is that if you are going to distribute
binary-only programs, you ought to link them statically, or include binaries
of all the libraries you use. To put it bluntly, vendors that don't do this
are either lazy or incompetent. Fortunately, smart users can still work
around this. =)
Even with the most dire non-support, fortunately, closed-source software can
pretty much always still be used by doing one or more of chroots, virtual
machines (e.g. QEmu, VMware, Xen, etc), or dual-booting.
> >As an aside, I prefer "GNU/Linux", not only because it actually makes
> > sense,
>
> I'm just pissed that someone has to promote a separate "GNU_Linux"
> mailing list when both of them are starved for participation.
Yeah, I agree that having two NM*UG mailing lists is kind of counter
productive given the 10-post-a-month traffic, and the almost identical actual
subject matter as measured by post content.
Actually, I thought someone kept saying they were going to merge these lists?
--
Wesley J. Landaker <wjl@icecavern.net>
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